Mt Victoria killing recalled by death

Press, 12 November 1977, Page 6

Mt Victoria killing recalled by death

PA New Plymouth A man found dead in a New Plymouth flat on Thursday afternoon has been identified as Edward Raymond Horton, aged 49, who served time in prison on a murder charge.

At the age of 20, Horton was convicted of the murder of a widow, Mrs Katherine Cranston, aged 47, on Mount Victoria, Wellington. After being paroled, he worked in New Plymouth for several years as a painter. The police have established that there was nothing suspicious about the death.

After a post-mortem examination yesterday and intensive investigations, they announced that the death was due to natural causes.

Their suspicions had been aroused because of abrasions on the dead man’s face, and the fact that he was living alone.

On September 26. 1948. a (group of boys found the body of Mrs Cranston in scrub on Mount Victoria. From marks and items found nearby, the police decided that Mrs Cranston had been struck down on the road, thrown down the hill, beaten again, raped, and killed.

In the belief that the woman’s attacker would have been marked in the struggle, they started looking for two men reported to have called at a pharmacy to get treatment for one of them. Horton and another man were arrested at Wellington railway station on Monday evening.

They were not the men who called at the pharmacy, but Horton had a previous conviction for assault with intent to commit rape. When investigations revealed that Horton had returned from a Sunday walk with blood on his clothing, he was charged with murder. The police said that he made a confession, but declined to sign the statement. At his trial, he said the blood came from a fight with another man.

He was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.

I Sentencing Horton to life I imprisonment, the then Chief (Justice, Sir Humphrey O’Leary, said: “You have committed a most atrocious crime, the circumstances of which, according to the pathologist, are almost incredible, and beyond anything in his very great experience. It was almost consistent with the act of a (maniac.”

| Seven years later, Horton (escaped from a sports party I making a regular outside | visit from Mount Eden Prison, and there was an outcry about how a prisoner serving a life term for a sick and brutal murder could be allowed such latitude.

I He was one of 17 prisoners, including 12 men serving life terms, who left .the jail under guard for a (bowls evening at Mount [Albert.

! Horton was recaptured by armed policemen — with no harm to anyone—three da\s later, and was eventually sentenced to a further three years imprisonment. The then Minister of Justice. Mr Marshall (now Sir John), came to Auckland to look into all aspects of the escape. He declared that the granting of outside privileges to men such as Horton was not a correct interpretation of the new prison policy for the rehabilitation of criminals.